By June 2016, 68% of U.S. adults had registered on Facebook. 81% of millennials were checking Twitter at least once every day. LinkedIn claimed to have over 450 million user profiles. And Snapchat was accessed by at least 41% young adults in the US on any given day.

YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, have also boasted a continuous rise in new registrations and daily users year-on-year in the US and across the globe.

Social Networking, which was once believed to be a passing fashion, has now turned into a popular way for brands to cultivate and engage their targeted audience while driving sales. By 2016, more than 50 million businesses had created their Facebook Business Pages. And over 2 million of these businesses also advertised on Facebook to reach out to their targeted users.

It is clear now that Social Media is here to stay and will keep evolving.

So before you finalize your social media marketing strategy for the year ahead, it is important to look ahead and be sure about where you should focus your efforts in the coming year and why. In this blog post, we’ll dive into what to expect in 2017, and how to design a well-informed strategy for 2017.

Cut Back on Twitter Automation this year

In last few years, Twitter has shown a continuous decrease in popularity (daily user volume), while, Instagram and Snapchat have been constantly gaining more strength. Some marketers even started questioning the ability of Twitter to hold the interest of its users and claimed to have reduced their marketing efforts on this platform.

But looking at how deeply rooted Twitter is into the life of its users, there is definitely no way of it going away anytime soon. Especially as marketers, if we identify why people are getting annoyed with Twitter and adjust our strategies to suit the changing circumstances, we can create a better user experience and draw greater benefits.

Therefore, for businesses planning to do well on Twitter, it is important to stop wasting time in the old fashioned one-way communication with scheduled or hashtag stuffed tweets. Instead, the focus should be on developing real-time, one-on-one conversations with the targeted audience and industry experts. The point is that people do not come to read marketing messages on Twitter. They come to interact, learn, share knowledge and build their own social network. For example, the most popular tweets of 2016 had no mentions, hashtags, or marketing messages.

Snapchat will introduce enhanced live video features

The user demographics of Snapchat coincide closely with that of Instagram, making them rivals. Last year September, when Snapchat released Spectacles immediately after rebranding itself to Snap, Inc. rival Facebook to counter its popularity, rolled out the live video features on Instagram ending up capturing the attention of a bigger share of the social media market. Further, Facebook also introduced new features to its messenger similar to Snapchat.

We predict that this year, Snap, Inc. would definitely bring in its own competitive live-streaming features to regain the market share. Possibly, it will target its younger audience with more appealing and creative video options.

Live video streaming on LinkedIn would boost targeted sales

With all social networks experimenting live video streaming, it is very much possible to see this feature being introduced to LinkedIn as well very soon. And if this happens, B2B marketers would be equipped with a powerful tool to target a defined audience with precise business needs through a highly effective live content. For example, giving a demonstration of a product or service live, or even interviewing happy customers and broadcasting the video to potential new customers.

This will have huge potential for developing creative and innovative live content, which could be irresistible for the targeted users to not appreciate or share with their network. And above all, nothing can be more authentic and real than a live video streaming when it comes to winning the trust of your prospects or customers.

Conclusion: Just like last year, when all Social Networks seemed to be focused on one common goal of social customer care, in 2017 also we predict all these platforms to be working on common goals, like integrating some form of Live Video Streaming features in their own innovative ways. This, but will also create a powerful avenue for targeted sales.

We predict that the interactive nature of live streaming will not only makes Social Networks more entertaining and fun but will also drive strong growth in the market as more publishers get involved.